The town takes its name from the rapids on the Seneca River (once more of a “fall” or drop than a formal waterfall).
A young cartographer in the 1790s arrives in the town to map the river’s “falls” and finds that local Indigenous place-names (like “Shaseonce” meaning “swift-rolling water”) clash with incoming settlers’ expectations of a dramatic waterfall.
He meets a local Iroquois guide who shows him hidden rapids and tells him stories of the river’s power and their people’s relationship to it.
Conflict arises when a logging company proposes to build a mill at the drop, threatening the rapids and the Indigenous guide’s sacred sites.
The cartographer must choose whether to finish his map in the settlers’ style or record the land as the guide knows it.
Cultural clash; nature’s hidden power; what is lost when you rename a place.
